The Government is just tinkering around the edges of WorkChoices with the announcement of a 'fairness test' for AWAs. What's needed is a meaningful, legislated guarantee that would ensure no workers would be worse off by signing an AWA, compared to their Award or Collective Agreement.
If the Government is fair-dinkum about a 'fairness test' they should legislate for a meaningful test, rather than the half-measures announced today.
The new fairness test only applies to the nine 'protected' award conditions. This means important employment conditions outside the nine - such as redundancy entitlements / family friendly arrangments - will still be under threat from AWAs.
Download Government media release and full document.
Read media reports: Hockey denies public pressure led to WorkChoices scale back ABC online IR backflip is 'desperate', says Labor The Age online
What do you think? Please leave a comment.
3 comments:
What about the thousands of employees who have been pushed onto AWA's already. Under the governments proposals, this wont mean a thing because they are already tied to the AWA agreement until the timed end of it. What happens then, is the new one measured against the award in terms of fairness or has this option disappeared due to the existence of the previous AWA against which the new AWA is to be measured?
Thanks
John Pritchard
The Australian people will not be fooled by this tinkering around the edges. If Howard is returned he simply do a backflip to get rid of the fairness test.
We all need to work even harder to ensure the Australian public can see through this sillyness.
Tell your family, friends and coworkers that WorkChoices remains NO CHOICES.
Cheers
Greg
Moving forward, what will the government's so called 'fairness' test be based on once the current awards run out. Sends a shiver up the spine doesn't it? Jules
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